The movie Gattaca presents numerous ethical issues in a poignant affective manner. Parallels can be draw from the situations in the film and situations from the current reality. These parallels raise questions that must be addressed. There are three major areas that the movie draws attention to; eugenics, nature vs nurture, and privacy or access and the role of consent. These all pose certain problems in the film and in today’s world.
The issue of eugenics, and discrimination within that concept, is perhaps the most obvious of the ethical themes the movie Gattaca contains. Eugenics aims to either eradicate negative heritable traits and/or encourage positive heritable traits in the human population by controlled breeding with the goal of improving …show more content…
Some would say this is compulsion others that it’s only parents wanting the best for their children. In the film this selection allows them to get rid of diseases as well as physical flaws and predispositions to personality “defects”. Even in this reality the idea of using technology for disease elimination is hard to argue as non-beneficial. Except in the rare cases where a genetic condition might make you immune to a communicable disease; sickle cell trait and malaria for example. It is the selections towards “arbitrary standards of perfection” like in Gattaca that instill doubts and worries about ethics. To this affect, in the movie, this kind of eugenics allows for an intense practice of discrimination against the children born without being engineered. The main character of the film narrates; “I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin.” (Gattica) However, in the real world, if this practice were to become widespread the discrimination would be much more than that. Social status and the color of your skin would determine the alleged “quality” of your genes because the wealthy, often white, people of the world would gain access to this technology first. Thus prompting greater discrimination on all
The issue of eugenics, and discrimination within that concept, is perhaps the most obvious of the ethical themes the movie Gattaca contains. Eugenics aims to either eradicate negative heritable traits and/or encourage positive heritable traits in the human population by controlled breeding with the goal of improving …show more content…
Some would say this is compulsion others that it’s only parents wanting the best for their children. In the film this selection allows them to get rid of diseases as well as physical flaws and predispositions to personality “defects”. Even in this reality the idea of using technology for disease elimination is hard to argue as non-beneficial. Except in the rare cases where a genetic condition might make you immune to a communicable disease; sickle cell trait and malaria for example. It is the selections towards “arbitrary standards of perfection” like in Gattaca that instill doubts and worries about ethics. To this affect, in the movie, this kind of eugenics allows for an intense practice of discrimination against the children born without being engineered. The main character of the film narrates; “I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin.” (Gattica) However, in the real world, if this practice were to become widespread the discrimination would be much more than that. Social status and the color of your skin would determine the alleged “quality” of your genes because the wealthy, often white, people of the world would gain access to this technology first. Thus prompting greater discrimination on all